A Sharecropper S Story

This is a story based on true events surrounding the life and times of Elizabeth Jane Jones Davis, known to many as Madea. This story tells of the struggles of the black man living down on the countryside of southern Alabama during the 1950s and 1960s, refusing to depend solely on the privileges allowed by some white landowners. When the black man failed to meet the demands of some white men, the acts of slavery were reignited all over again. This was an act that some white men seemed to remembe

A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the mistreatment of black Americans. In this 'precise and eloquent work' - as described in its Pulitzer Prize citation - Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an 'Age of Neoslavery' that thrived in the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude thereafter. By turns moving, sobering and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals these stories, the companies that profited the most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

Today sharecropping is history, though during World War II and the Great Depression sharecropping was prevalent in Louisiana's southern parishes. Sharecroppers rented farmland and often a small house, agreeing to pay a one-third share of all profit from the sale of crops grown on the land. Sharecropping shaped Louisiana's rich cultural history, and while there have been books published about sharecropping, they share a predominately male perspective. In A Cajun Girl's Sharecropping Years, Viola Fontenot adds the female voice into the story of sharecropping. Spanning from 1937 to 1955, Fontenot describes her life as the daughter of a sharecropper in Church Point, Louisiana, including details of field work as well as the domestic arts and Cajun culture. The account begins with stories from early life, where the family lived off a gravel road near the woods without electricity, running water, or bathrooms, and a mule-drawn wagon was the only means of transportation. To gently introduce the reader to her native language, the author often includes French words along with a succinct definition. This becomes an important part of the story as Fontenot attends primary school, where she experienced prejudice for speaking French, a forbidden and punishable act. Descriptions of Fontenot's teenage years include stories of going to the boucherie; canning blackberries, figs, and pumpkins; using the wood stove to cook dinner; washing and ironing laundry; and making moss mattresses. Also included in the texts are explanations of rural Cajun holiday traditions, courting customs, leisure activities, children's games, and Saturday night house dances for family and neighbors, the fais do-do.

This paperback facsimile edition restores to print Howard Kester's Revolt among the Sharecroppers, a lost classic of southern radicalism. First published in 1936, Kester's brief, stirring book provides a dramatic eyewitness account of the origins of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU), the Arkansas Delta sharecroppers' organization whose cause was championed by religious radicals and socialists during the 1930s. Accompanying Kester's original text is a substantial new introductory essay by historian Alex Lichtenstein. This edition will introduce general readers, scholars, and students to a social movement with significant historical implications. In its commitment to interracialism, the STFU challenged long-standing southern traditions. In its hostility to the agricultural recovery programs of the 1930s (which tended to benefit landowners at the expense of tenant farmers), the union offered an early critique of New Deal liberalism. And, finally, in its insistence that the dispossessed could assume control of their own destiny, the STFU foreshadowed the progressive social movements of the 1960s. Thus, Revolt among the Sharecroppers is an important primary document that makes a signal contribution to our understanding of southern history, labor history, African American history, and the history of Depression-era America. Kester's text recounts the early history of the STFU and its criticisms of the New Deal in compelling, accessible prose. Lichtenstein's introduction offers biographical background on Kester, explores the religious and socialist beliefs that led him to work with the STFU, describes the racial and social climate that shaped the union's emergence, places the union'srise and decline within the context of 1930s politics, and outlines the legacy of this remarkable organization.

Folk singer and labor organizer John Handcox was born to illiterate sharecroppers, but went on to become one of the most beloved folk singers of the prewar labor movement. This beautifully told oral history gives us Handcox in his own words, recounting a journey that began in the Deep South and went on to shape the labor music tradition.

This is set in the rural part of America in the 1960s. A great deal of African Americans were still in the South, picking cotton, chopping cotton, and working on plantations. Little did we know that in the 1960s, there was an industrial revolution not only in the north with the steel mills, stockyards, constructions, and in others, like domestic jobs in the home, hotels, and for drivers in all aspects of transportation. Every Sunday morning, African Americans would attend church, all day long in most situations because that was a tradition that was taking place in the South during the sharecropping days and slavery days. I found out that a great deal of churches provided financial support and education for the laughs because Americans were sharecroppers. African Americans, with their best Sunday clothes on, headed to the church to thank God for another week. Traditions such as gold traditions were maintained by the shoppers and also African American landholders and owners as well. There was also a great deal of landowners doing shopping. At this time, they did not have as much property as plantation owners. But they were lying on this, and they had so much pride in what they did in their work. These basic and general values for African Americans on Sundays is very powerful. Let us look forward to the next book that will discuss what happened after 1965 once the sharecropper grandson enters the Chicago metropolitan area after being gone for seven years and see his views and understanding of returning back from the rule of Mississippi to the Uptown Chicago. Lets see what changes in opportunity that will be taken advantage of and the disadvantages that he will experience. This is my view. This is my love for the book White Gold Cotton and Sharecroppers Stories. Charles Watkins lll, author of the book

Author Doug Williams's "Life of a Sharecropper's Son" is a true rags to riches story of a life torn with tragedy and buttressed with hope. Williams shares with brutal honesty the life accounts of a sharecropper's son, from anecdotes about childhood on the farm through World War II and beyond. Join this sharecropper's son as he plumbs the depths of family heartache and finds hope in his eternal Creator. This is a fascinating story of life in the southern section of our country. It is a part of our history I had never known. I found the book very hard to put down before I had finished reading it all. - Margaret Aston, Princeton, New Jersey